


The Boy Who Swam Through Time

by Lexx



Category: Free!
Genre: Blowjobs, Bottom!Rin, First kiss (and many more), M/M, Time Travel AU, and i ended up with an 8k+ MONSTER, i really only intended to write like 3k at most, i'm sweating i have no idea what tags to use, sexy stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 04:09:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5524892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexx/pseuds/Lexx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time is like a river - or, perhaps, like the endless tidal cycle of the ocean. When Haru finds himself dragged along in its undertow, he is transported over and over to a new world, at differing points in its timeline, until he can realize his destiny with Rin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Boy Who Swam Through Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nathengyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nathengyn/gifts).



> SO THIS IS MY very long, very convoluted gift for nathengyn! ♥ I LOVED the idea of a time travel AU, but I wasn't initially sure how to work it - I don't often write AUs, and this ended up being a super fun challenge. Also, the sexy part is kind of very rushed, and I apologize. I wanted to be sure you got your gift in time for Christmas!
> 
> I hope it's something you can enjoy! Happy holidays! ♥

**_The Beginning_ **

 

The first time Haruka Nanase was swallowed by the sea, he was eleven years old, slightly friendless, and selectively mute.

He never answered questions or read aloud from texts at school, and he would speak only in soft words, _short_ words, with his grandmother alone. Of course, both at school and at Iwatobi SC, there were numerous acquaintances that thought themselves to be his friend. Haru had always gathered people to his side effortlessly, without trying, and without wanting them in the first place. So many voices, overlapping; so many opinions that weren’t his, voiced in his name, as if his classmates were doing him a favor; so many words, _always_ words, that filled his mind like an itching, burning static.

The only peace he had was within the water. Slipping into its cool embrace was like finding solace. He did not need to explain himself here; he did not need to make himself understood.

Here, he simply _was_.

And perhaps, one hot, summer afternoon, he strayed too far from shore. Perhaps he got too careless. Ocean swimming was tricky, with the pushback from its lapping waves and the hidden pull from its sand-skimming currents, but he kept at it, and eventually found the place that he always returned to, the place where peace rolled over his bare skin and sighed through his soul. Every breath he drew, every exhalation, was all perfectly in rhythm with the waves. His hands slipped easily beneath the surface, pulling back the water as if they had been shaped for that very purpose, and he carved himself an opening within the sea that his body glided into without any restraint. Everything—his movements, his breath, and the ocean surrounding him—was perfectly in harmony, and then it wasn’t, and he was bowled over by a large wave and then swept roughly against the seafloor.

Haru had the good presence of mind to hold his breath tight, and struggled to swim back up to the air and sunlight—but the ocean had him gripped securely in its strong hold, and he was whisked along, bowled back and forth as though he were nothing more than a discarded seashell. He slammed roughly against a rock, and then another. Dizzy, throbbing, lungs aching for air, he tried one last time to swim to the surface.

He swam up, and up, and _up_. There never quite seemed to be an end to the ocean over his head. For a panicked, dizzy moment, Haru thought, _I’m miles below the surface, the ocean’s carried me so far out that I’ll never be able to swim back—_ and all of a sudden, his head broke through, and he was gasping hungrily for air. Lightheaded and weak, he stumbled, finding his footing. He was back in the shallows, and there was sand beneath his bare feet once more, studded with shells and pebbles worn smooth by years of the sea’s relentless coddling.

The skin on his cheek, as well as parts of his back and shoulder, stung badly once he stood, pushing his upper body free from the water. Haru wondered if he was bleeding from how roughly the sea had handled him; he felt scraped raw.

And then he looked around him, _truly_ looked around him, and realized he had a far larger problem than scrapes and bruises and residual drops of seawater in his lungs.

Heat pressed down on him—heat more oppressive than anything he had ever known in Iwatobi, where the ocean cooled even the most humid and stagnant of summer days. It was a painfully arid temperature that enveloped him now, and it wicked away the saltwater from his lips and eyelashes in mere moments before settling to work upon his damp skin. He nervously wetted his lips, his gaze dark and painfully wide, and made no move to step free from the water, for it was suddenly the only thing grounding him to the world he’d been swept away from.

It was no longer the middle of the day, as it had been only moments before. The sky was suddenly mottled with shades of red and azure, melting together to create a vivid, bruise-like wash of violet; the sun was a large, gold-plated sphere, so bright in its low position on the horizon that it made Haru’s eyes water to gaze at it even indirectly. It was sinking, like a heavy, burnished stone, and all around him, where there had once been ocean, there was _sand_ —sand that stretched out to the horizon, glittering carnelian within the harsh rays of dusky light; sand that was heaped and piled around him like mountains in all directions.

Haru didn’t realize he’d fallen to his knees, shivering within the water despite the heat, until a hand extended before him to help him back to his feet. He looked up, nearly uncomprehending, into the concerned, green eyes of a boy his age. Eyes as green as the lush nature of Haru’s home; eyes greener than anything this empty, waterless wasteland could ever hope to produce.

“Are you okay?” he asked Haru, who stared dumbly at him, unable to move the dead weight of his tongue within his dry mouth. Eventually, because it seemed rude to leave him hanging there, waiting, Haru took the offered hand, and let the boy pull Haru forth, into a new world.

 

**_The First Day_ **

 

The boy’s name was Makoto, he eventually learned, and despite Haru’s addled state, he appeared to have no trouble discerning anything that Haru thought. Makoto talked endlessly, but was good enough at reading Haru’s wordless cues—or perhaps his _mind_ —so that he always politely trailed off before Haru began to feel overwhelmed by him. _Have my expressions always been so transparent?_ he wondered dimly, lying back against the large cushions that pillowed his bandaged back and shoulders. He didn’t think so—if they were, then everyone he’d ever known before must have been very good at ignoring them, save for his grandmother.

Makoto, however, was currently _not_ reading Haru’s silent demand that he stop trying to sponge Haru’s forehead with a wet cloth, and so he was forced to finally speak aloud. “Cut it out,” he muttered, waving his hand weakly in front of his face. His was fairly certain his fever wouldn’t improve from this.

“So you _can_ speak,” Makoto replied, drawing the sopping cloth away. It wasn’t a sarcastic answer; there was genuine delight belying his words. Haru wrinkled his nose and turned away, and Makoto laughed. “Do you have a name?”

Haru weighed his options—tell him, don’t tell him—and decided that even if this was all a terrible dream, it _felt_ real enough that it might be in his best interests to cooperate. “Haruka,” he said. “Call me Haru.”

Makoto visibly brightened. “That’s a nice name.”

He didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing at all, and Makoto busied himself with putting away the water dish and the medical salves his mother had used on Haru’s scrapes earlier. After a long moment, a new voice piped up from the corner of the tent—“Sounds kind of girly to me.”

“Rin,” Makoto chided without turning around.

“It is _not_ ,” Haru said, nearly at the same time, and was answered by a bright peal of laughter.

“ _Touchy_ ,” the new boy— _Rin_ —said, and came into Haru’s view. He had dark red hair, almost girlishly long as it brushed past his pretty chin, and eyes brighter than the setting sun Haru had seen earlier, and for a frustrating moment, he felt like he was having trouble breathing. The happiness on his face was so pure; he seemed like the sort that attracted crowds with ease, and who knew what to say to them, too. He was shirtless—perhaps Haru would’ve thought him a girl otherwise—and dressed handsomely in pants of loose, white silk, along with gold bangles and rings that flashed on his wrists and fingers. Makoto’s style of clothing was similar to Rin’s, but his seemed worn, lived-in, and he did not have any of the jewelry that Rin possessed. Rin directed that bright smile down at Haru, who stiffened immediately, braced for conflict. He leaned over and said, “You don’t look too much like a girl, though. And your clothes are super weird.”

Haru flushed immediately, without any logical reason for it, and his mouth worked silently, offended and yet unable to produce a proper retort in reply. _My swimsuit is normal—your balloon pants are the_ weird _clothes here,_ he wanted to snarl. He hated himself for all of his silence up until that point. He’d forgotten how to respond easily, and his shame made his cheeks redden all the more from anger.

He’d never been so worked up. Never. It was almost thrilling to have his heart beating so fast.

A concerned crease touched the skin between Rin’s eyebrows, as he began to say, “Wait, Haru, are you—”

The world clouded in on him, dimmed entirely, and went black.

 

**_The Third Day_ **

 

Haru’s fever and scrapes were well behind him by the afternoon of his third day in the desert, and he followed Makoto almost shyly around the caravan as his new friend introduced him to dozens of adults whose names he already felt himself forgetting. When it began to be too much, Makoto took notice; without so much as missing a beat, he told the most recent caravan member, a navigator by the name of Miho, that Haru was still recovering from illness, and ought to head back to his cot.

“How do you do that?” he asked Makoto under his breath, and Makoto blinked at him in surprise.

“Do what?”

“That—that thing. You know, where you know what I’m thinking. Without me…without me saying anything.”

Makoto’s eyes widened, and then he laughed. From any other person, it might’ve felt patronizing, but from Makoto, it merely seemed kind. “I suppose I can just sense it,” he told Haru with an unbothered shrug.

 _Well, maybe you should stop sensing it,_ he wanted to say. The words were hot on his tongue, heating his throat like the food he’d been served by the caravan for the last few nights, but he swallowed them, because in truth, he liked how easily Makoto could read him. It gave him the same sense of ease that he got from swimming; there was no need to make himself understood, because he already was. Having Makoto read him so well was almost terrifyingly intimate, but at the same time, he’d never had a friend like Makoto before. It wasn’t…unpleasant.

When they ducked into the tent that Haru had been sharing with Makoto and his family, Rin was already there, grinning mischievously. Before either of them could say a word, he dashed up to Haru and grabbed his wrists, tugging at them, and turned his charm on the taller boy at Haru’s side. “Makoto, Haru,” he chanted in a low voice, “let’s go swimming!”

“That sort of sounds like a bad idea,” Makoto replied. “We’re about to head out again, and Haru—”

“I _know_ we’re about to head out again,” Rin replied, whining very slightly, “and it’s our last chance to swim here before we’re back in the city. It’s our last chance before I have to _leave_. Don’t you want to race me?”

Makoto chuckled. “Rin, I lose to you every time we race. Aren’t you tired of beating me?”

“You have to leave?” Haru asked, so quietly that he thought Rin might not have heard him at all, but Rin’s bright eyes flicked back to him. Even when he was pretending otherwise, it seemed like he always had his attention on Haru when he was near; it was a little unsettling.

“Yeah,” Rin replied, smiling a bit sheepishly. “This was always temporary—me traveling with Makoto’s caravan, I mean. My father is one of the Princes in the capitol, but he wanted me to travel and to get a better idea of trade between the towns and the capitol. I’m glad it meant I got to meet the two of you, though.”

Haru wanted to flush again at how sincere Rin sounded. Arguments immediately sprung up in his mind— _But you only met me right at the end of your journey,_ he wanted to say, _so what’s the point?_ Once again, Rin was affecting him in a way he hadn’t anticipated; Rin was leaving him feeling hollow, when all of his concerns should’ve been on getting back home, to Iwatobi and his grandmother, not on where Rin would be going next.

But he _did_ care about where Rin was going next.

Instead of saying any of the thoughts that were rattling around in his mind aloud, he told Rin, “I’ll race you.” Once again, his voice was low, but Rin heard him with perfect clarity.

The brightness in his eyes turned to a spark, and that spark turned into a fire.

“Let’s go,” he told Haru, flashing him a dangerously sharp grin, and tugged him toward the oasis that Haru had emerged from before Makoto could try and hold them back.

Rin was a fast opponent in the water, but Haru was faster. He easily beat Rin, whose shock turned to an adamant demand to race again, and again, and by the third time, he was breathing hard, trying to keep up with Rin’s fierce, unrelenting determination. They touched the rock at the far edge of the oasis at the same time and pushed off.

Haru’s angle was wrong. He had a very clear, awful moment where he realized he’d made a mistake; he pitched too low, and suddenly there was no sand to hold him up, and he was falling, _falling_ , through a bottomless oasis in the middle of a desert with no name that he knew. He floundered and struggled and tried desperately to right himself, and when his head broke the surface again, he was in the saltwater ocean of Iwatobi, and it was noon, and when he walked into his grandmother’s kitchen again, still all scraped up and in borrowed, sand-worn clothes that couldn’t have come from his home, he realized hardly any time had passed at all.

 

**_The Fourth Day_ **

 

His thoughts were consumed with his new friends—Makoto’s smiling eyes and easygoing demeanor, and Rin’s fiery smile, so full of laughter and light. He could hardly pay attention in school; he swam in the ocean every weekend. When summer vacation finally was upon him, he spent every day at the beach, diving to the sandy, murky bottom of the shallows, searching for the part of the seafloor that would open for him and lead him back to the oasis. It took him nearly a month before he discovered it; a ring of rocks, far enough out to sea that his feet were totally unable to touch the bottom, surrounding a large, yawning hole. When he deliberately swam down into it, it felt as though his heart was in his throat the entire time, clamoring to warn him that this was a huge mistake.

Just when Haru began to think he would never reach the seafloor, the water grew lighter around him, and suddenly he was swimming _up_ toward sunlight. His head broke the surface, and he was treading water within the oasis, surrounded by the soft light of early morning in the desert. The water on his lips was fresh, not salty.

Excitement pounded a haphazard rhythm in his veins. He took a deep breath and ducked down again, swimming until he surfaced in Iwatobi.

No time had passed here; he was clearly back home.

He swam back to the desert, and clambered out of the oasis, casting around wildly for any sign of the caravan Makoto and Rin had been with. The desert was empty for miles around him. He could hardly swallow around the crushing disappointment in his throat.

Eventually, the desert’s day passed into night, and Haru knew that the caravan was long gone. He swam back into the daylight of Iwatobi, badly sunburned from his time waiting in the desert, and trudged home.

 

**_The Twentieth Day_ **

 

During the twentieth time he visited the desert, Haru surfaced and came nearly face-to-face with a much older Makoto than he’d been anticipating.

“Haru!” Makoto gasped, and then glanced furtively around him. “Haru, quick, they can’t see you here. Can you swim over to those fronds—?”

Haru dipped easily beneath the water and quietly did as Makoto bid him, surfacing behind their cover. Makoto walked casually around the oasis shores, looking for all the world like an unbothered young man, only to break into a sprint once he was in the palms’ shade. He fell to his knees before Haru, stretching out a hand that shook slightly; his fingers fell short of actually touching Haru’s face.

“You haven’t aged at all,” he whispered.

Haru was badly shaken by this development. Time had hardly passed at all in Iwatobi, but clearly it went by far more quickly here. How long had it been? Ten years for Makoto? Twenty?

As though Makoto could read his thoughts—this, at least, seemed to be unchanged about him—he said, “It’s been fifteen years.”

That meant Makoto was now _twenty-six_ , while Haru remained eleven years old.

He gaped at Makoto for a long moment, and then, finally, asked, “How’s Rin?”

Makoto’s gaze darkened slightly, before he pushed forth a warm smile. “Well enough, in the capitol. I haven’t spoken with him much since he returned. His father…his father became very ill, a few years after we met you, and he became the Great Prince Over Princes when he turned eighteen. He’s been…busy.”

Haru was silent for a moment. “The Prince Over Princes? Does that mean he’s…he’s like the _king_?”

“Something like that,” Makoto agreed. “He’s…a bit different now than when you knew him, Haru. I’m sorry.” He paused again, and then, with a bit of a nervous laugh, he said, “Rin’s going to be married soon.”

“ _What_?”

“He’s engaged to a princess from the southern desert, since he’s royalty and all. I thought he was pretty adamant with his advisors, but here we are.”

He shook his head, trying to quell the horror rising in him. “Makoto…I had no idea I would come back so late. It’s only been a few months since I last saw you.”

Makoto’s eyes were wide with awe, despite the undercurrent of sadness within them. “Can you choose what time you travel to? Will you only ever be able to visit my future?”

“I’m not sure how I can control it,” Haru whispered, a little miserably.

“Try again,” Makoto urged him. “Try again. I’ll be waiting for you.”

“No, Makoto, there’s no way to know when I’ll be back—”

“Try again,” Makoto told him firmly, and smiled that same, warm smile down at the much younger Haru. “I’ll be waiting, no matter how old I am.”

With a last, despairing look at his friend, now a decade and a half older than him, Haru dove back into the water and resurfaced in Iwatobi.

 

**_The Twenty-First Day_ **

 

Moments later, he re-emerged in the oasis.

Makoto was not there, but Rin was.

To Haru’s immense relief, Rin looked to be the way Haru had left him. He startled visibly as Haru’s head broke through the pool’s surface, and then scrambled to his feet, his face conveying absolute shock. “ _Haru_!” he gasped.

“Rin!” Haru replied, almost weak with joy. “Rin, how old are you?”

“ _What?_ ”

“How _old_ _are you_?” he repeated, carefully enunciating each word, in a condescending sort of way.

Rin flushed. “I’m _thirteen_ ,” he snarled back, in tone that said, very clearly, ‘I heard you the first time, asshole.’

_Close enough._

Haru let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Rin, you can’t get married.” The words were out before he could stop them, and Rin’s face, already incredulous, now flushed into an admirable shade of red, almost as deep as his hair and eyes.

“ _What!?_ ”

Only then did Haru notice the shadows beneath those eyes, and the shimmering black of Rin’s silken pants. He was curiously bare of all gold, and there was a darkness to Rin’s expression that was totally unlike the Rin he’d met all those months ago. “Is…everything all right, Rin?”

He looked back up to Rin’s face, and a despairing flash touched his friend’s expression before vanishing behind a hard wall, disguising Rin’s feelings from Haru. “The Great Prince…my grandfather…just died, and my father’s really sick,” Rin finally answered. “They’re saying I’ll become the next Great Prince, since my father is too ill to take the throne.”

Haru was stunned into silence for a moment, remembering what a much older Makoto had told him only minutes before— _‘His father became very ill, a few years after we met you, and he became the Great Prince Over Princes when he turned eighteen.’_

Rin still had five more years before his father would die, and though the knowledge twisted like a knife in Haru’s heart, he pushed that pain aside. Rin was not going to become king just yet.

“Your father will be fine. I know it,” Haru told him, and perhaps Rin saw something in his blue eyes that reassured him, because all at once the misery on his friend’s face melted into something softer, something more familiar.

“Where have you been?” Rin asked, gently. He seemed almost embarrassed by the question. “Where did you… _go_?”

“I…” How could he explain it? Makoto hadn’t needed any clarification, because of their age difference, and because of how easily he could read Haru. “I’m…not from here,” he said lamely, after a long pause. “But I can swim back and forth from my home to this oasis, this desert—there’s…there’s a tunnel, I think, and I…”

Rin’s face was entirely skeptical. “That can’t be real.”

“Rin, it’s been two years since you last saw me, right? But for me…for me, it’s only been a few months at most.”

Rin was shaking his head slowly. His voice was incredulous as he said, “That _can’t_ be real.”

“I’ll prove it,” Haru whispered. “I’ll find you, in the future. You’ll remember this conversation, won’t you?”

After a long moment, Rin gave a hesitant nod.

“Wait for me.”

He watched Rin, waiting for him to say something, anything, and finally, Rin whispered, “Wait, Haru, before you go—” He stopped, fiddled with his right ear for a moment, and then held out his hand in a fist. Haru swam closer, holding out his own hand a bit hesitantly. Something red and glittering fell heavy into his outstretched palm.

A ruby earring; he could now see its twin in Rin’s left ear.

“Give it back when you see me next.” He quirked his mouth into a smile, and Haru nodded. Without another word, he dove back to the bottom of the oasis, leaving Rin behind.

 

**_The Thirty-Fifth Day_ **

 

Haru had begun to lose hope that he’d ever be reunited with either Makoto or Rin, and was starting to speculate if it was worth setting out into the desert in search of a town. It would certainly be dangerous, he mused as he floated upon the oasis’ surface. Probably stupid, in addition to dangerous. He wasn’t dressed or equipped to make his way through the desert; he wasn’t sure where the towns were, or if he could make it to one without becoming horribly lost and dying, buried by the bone-dry sands.

 _Why did it have to be a portal to a_  de _sert?_ he wondered, not for the first time, and clenched Rin’s earring tighter in his fist.

“Haru?”

He jumped up at the sound of a young man’s voice, splashing gracelessly within the water.

Rin was there—and he was much older than before. He wasn’t quite Makoto’s age from the last time Haru had seen him, but he looked to be sixteen, perhaps seventeen. _He’s about to become the Great Prince_ , he thought, a bit guiltily, and instead of saying anything, he merely waded over to Rin and thrust his fist out. Surprised, Rin cupped his hands beneath Haru’s, and Haru dropped the earring back into his palms.

Rin was very still, and very silent.

Finally, he looked up. “Are you going to be young forever?”

“No,” Haru said. “I’ll age, just like you—but my time runs differently than yours, I think, and I can’t control when I arrive here.”

Rin watched him, looking very much like he wanted to say something, but as though he was unsure of how to say it.

“The next time we’re the same age, Haru, will you stay here?”

This took Haru aback—he had never once considered _staying_ in this land, wherever it was. He was still in school; his grandmother would be alone without him. He swallowed, a little nervously, and said, “I can’t.”

Rin was quiet. After a moment, he said, “Let’s race.”

They raced.

It ended in a tie.

The coldness that had been in Rin’s face earlier eased away, until his eyes were bright and his smile was brighter, and it returned only when the day grew long and Haru had to leave again.

“You’ll be back?”

 _I don’t think I can stay away,_ Haru immediately thought, and it surprised him. Without realizing it, he’d begun to look forward to these visits, these chance meetings; he had found truer friends Rin and Makoto than he’d ever found in his classmates back home.

“Of course,” he promised Rin.

 

**_The Three Hundredth Day_ **

****

During this visit, Haru was fifteen, and Rin and Makoto were seventeen, and Rin would become the Great Prince Over Princes in just one year. If Haru had possessed any doubts about this before, they had been erased by the dozens of times he had traveled to when Makoto was in his twenties—or, horrifyingly, once or twice, in his _thirties_. Each time, he had greeted Haru with a smile and the news that Rin had drifted away from them, without once having looked back.

More and more, he was learning that Rin had truly changed after his father’s death. He had—or, rather, he _would_ become—cold. The light in his eyes would flicker and die.

Once, an older Makoto wondered aloud if things would have been different had Haru been able to stay with them—with Rin. Haru wasn’t sure how his being there could have changed anything at all. And even though it was a dark thing, to think of a future without Rin in it, he got the timing right often enough, give or take a few years. They spent many afternoons swimming together—sometimes just Haru and Makoto; rarely just Haru and Rin; and, most wonderfully, the three of them, laughing together.

But this particular time after Haru and Rin had raced, and Rin was glistening and golden and bare-chested, his hair long and damp, his cheeks flushed slightly from the exertion of swimming, he met Haru’s eyes.

And held them.

Gemstone eyes, full of light, full of fire. They were watching Haru, perhaps truly seeing him in a way they never had before, and Haru wanted, very suddenly, very _powerfully_ , to stay.

He wetted his lips, a bit nervously, and said, “Rin…”

And Rin was already turning away, toward Makoto, urging him to race him next, and Haru’s stomach was in knots. Knots and knots. He pressed a distracted hand to his abdomen and wondered, what, _exactly_ , that had been all about.

He raced Rin a few more times after that, and won each time, until their last race of the day ended in another perfect tie.

He thought about the way Rin had held his eyes, and the small bead of water that had rolled down Rin’s cheek, dangling on his jaw.

“You’ll be back, won’t you, Haru?” Makoto asked, worry in his eyes—worry that Haru would somehow never meet up with them again. Haru looked back, thinking of all the ways they could meet again, and all the ways it would be wrong, because Rin wouldn’t be there anymore. Rin would leave them, someday.

“Yeah.”

 

**_The Five-Hundredth Ninety-Eighth Day_ **

 

Haru was feeling a bit shaken.

He had just traveled back in time, when Makoto had been perhaps ten, perhaps twelve at most, and Haru was seventeen, and he had dipped back into the water before he could be spotted.

Did Makoto know about his time-traveling yet? Was he too early—had he ever met Makoto at all? He couldn’t remember. Every timeline he’d touched was knotted up in his mind, and he’d traveled to the desert too many times to begin properly unraveling them. Sometimes, his visits would erase previous visits from ever happening; sometimes, he had memories that his friends no longer shared with him.

He couldn’t risk letting Makoto see him too early, because if it changed the future where he’d met both Makoto and Rin—if it changed things so that Rin never met him at all—he wouldn’t be able to bear it.

He resurfaced again with barely a ripple, and this time, Rin was there, as if waiting for him.

He was sitting on a rock, his ankles dipped into the water, and he hadn’t bothered with his usual cinnabar-orange headscarf. His hair, though cropped to his chin and jaw, was still almost girlishly long compared to Makoto’s. He was draped in white—a towel, Haru realized, since Rin’s pants had been discarded over in the shade just beyond him. His golden skin was still glittering with moisture.

He looked up, and saw Haru staring at him.

For a minute, neither of them spoke; and then Rin’s expression flashed into something akin to anger, and he jerked back, grabbing the white cloth closer to himself as though to cover his nakedness. “Haru!” he cried out, teeth flashing—were they sharpened? They’d never seemed so jagged before—had he filed them into points since Haru had seen him last? “What—what are you— _when_ did you—”

Haru had seen him naked hundreds of times before, and even when he was clothed, Rin almost never wore a shirt. He couldn’t fathom why Rin was flustered about this.

He couldn’t fathom why a small part of _him_ felt flustered by this, as well.

“I want to race,” he said, simply.

Rin watched him for a careful moment, and then, without a word, he peeled back the towel and slipped into the water. “Fine,” he growled. “Get over here.”

A new sensation shivered down the length of Haru’s spine at Rin’s tone. He slipped through the water, lined himself up against the rock beside Rin, and listened for Rin’s command to start the race.

For the first time, it was Rin who unquestionably won. Haru, out of breath, leaned all his weight against the rock and wondered why he felt like he was burning.

“Rin,” he started to say—perhaps to ask how old Rin was, how much time had passed since his last visit—and suddenly Rin had ducked in front of him. Haru was covered in Rin’s shadow, and he could see the way the sunlight illuminated the edges of Rin’s long hair and his handsome jaw, and their faces were, unexpectedly, _far_ too close, and—oh.

 _Oh_.

Rin’s hand was on his shoulder. Rin’s mouth was on his mouth.

The kiss ended as quickly and unexpectedly as it began, and the oasis’ water sloughed roughly against Haru as Rin pulled himself from the pool. He only stood there, frozen, his hand half-raised to his lips in stunned disbelief.

As soon as he could un-freeze, he whipped around with a splash to tell Rin to wait, to beg him not to leave, but he’d already mounted his camel. As Haru watched, Rin stirred the animal into a swift gallop.

Haru was alone, and only then did he have the strangest thought that the kiss had almost felt like a wordless goodbye.

 

**_The Six Hundredth Day_ **

 

The day Haru graduated from high school, he went straight to the beach.

He’d visited once since his race with Rin, and had encountered Makoto—an older Makoto, though no longer quite as ancient as he’d seemed to Haru all those years ago. Rin had become the Great Prince of Princes years ago. He was married. They called him the Tiger Lord, which made Haru snort derisively. He’d always seemed more like a shark.

Neither of them had seen Haru in almost fifteen years.

Hesitantly, he asked Makoto if he’d spoken with Rin at all since his coronation. Makoto’s answer was a solemn no.

There had never been such focus, such determination, in the way Haru had swum through the portal before—perhaps that was why, for the first time in seven years, he and Makoto were perfectly the same age when he surfaced from the pool, into the desert’s rosy dawn.

“Haru—” Makoto exclaimed, from where he was sitting with his feet dipped into the oasis’ waters, and Haru stepped toward him, shaking the water from his hair.

“How old are you?”

“Eighteen,” Makoto answered without skipping a beat. He was well used to this by now.

“Rin’s father is dead,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.

Makoto stared at him for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “Yesterday. How could you have possibly—?”

Haru met his eyes. “You don’t know all the times I found you in the future,” he explained wretchedly. “Twenty-six years old. Twenty-eight. Thirty-one. It was always the same.” Makoto’s eyes widened; Haru smiled, but there was no joy in it, no light. “Rin becomes the Great Prince once he turns eighteen. He never comes back to you. To us.” _To me._ There was fire in Haru—a fire that Rin had lit in him, with that smile, with those bright eyes. He was burning.

He was going to change the future for good.

“I’m going to _bring_ him back.”

Makoto watched him for a long moment, an unreadable expression in his eyes. Finally, a slow, earnest smile eased over his mouth, turning his beautiful, green eyes up at the edges. He didn’t say any of the things Haru thought he would say—no excited interjection asking if Haru was joining them for good, no questions about the possible futures Haru had known, no obligatory ‘What exactly do you feel for Rin’ query that he had been dreading, because he still wasn’t sure how to answer it. He merely said, “I’ll take you to him,” and extended his hand to help Haru out of the water.

He had never been so deeply glad to have a friend like Makoto in his life, but now he felt it all the way through to his soul.

Makoto’s entire caravan was back, as they were stopping briefly at the oasis to water their camels and rest before making the last push to the capitol. While Makoto’s parents were both alive and well, he had largely taken over as the caravan’s leader—he had natural skills in conflict resolution, navigation, and trade, and so the role had come to him quite naturally. He took Haru into his tent and knelt before a large chest. The clothes he pulled forth looked far nicer and cleaner than what he currently wore, though still nowhere near the quality of clothing Rin dressed in. “Take these,” he said, pushing them toward Haru. “Your…I’m still not sure _what_ that is…it’s noticeable.”

“It’s a swimsuit,” he muttered, taking the offered clothes. “We don’t all swim in our underwear back where I come from.” _Or completely naked,_ he added silently. Rin and Makoto had both proven countless times that they had no qualms swimming without any clothing at all. He couldn’t help but remember how flustered Rin had been the last time Haru had seen him naked, and it sent a hot flush through his body.

He dressed as quickly as he could, trying to model the clothing after the way Makoto and Rin wore theirs. The dark, baggy pants were far too large on him; Makoto gave him a decorative belt to secure them at Haru’s waist. Makoto scrutinized him for a moment, and then said, “I’ll give you a scarf to protect your head and shoulders from sunburn, but since we’re setting out during midday, I won’t bother with any kind of shirt—it’ll just be scratchy and uncomfortable in the heat.”

Haru cast a withering glance at Makoto’s own clothing—he wore a very slack shirt with a plunging neckline, and was draped loosely in overlapping, fastened cloths, much like the rest of the people he’d seen milling about the caravan’s tents. _This better not be for Rin’s benefit_ , he thought, and was then slightly scandalized at himself for that thought.

Makoto’s smile was perfectly serene, but he turned away, scratching an itch beneath his headscarf, in order to hide what seemed like a smirk.

As promised, he gave Haru long strips of cloth—one for his head, one to wrap around his shoulders, and a third to cover his nose and mouth in the event of a sandstorm. Once he’d made sure Haru was properly covered—“Nothing is worse sand hitting a blistering sunburn,” he promised Haru very seriously—he helped him onto a docile camel called Sandhya.

Haru had never ridden a horse before in his life, much less a camel, and the experience was both terrifying and ultimately unpleasant. By the time they arrived at the capitol’s gates—which was surprisingly close; Haru now understood how Rin could’ve joined them to swim all those times—his inner thighs were raw from the saddle, and his back was stiff and aching. Makoto, infuriatingly, rode easily, with a cheerful grin. Their ride had been about an hour and a half, and yet it had left no discernable weariness on his friend. Haru did his best to disguise his discomfort.

Makoto guided Haru toward a stagnant pool of water within the inner city, where numerous camels were tethered; he took Sandhya’s reigns, and watched Haru struggle back to the ground with great amusement. “I’ll water the camels here, and make sure no one tries to steal them.” He gestured toward the palace, which was indeed a handsome, ornate building. “Go straight, toward the main gate, and then go to the left, following the wall until you find a smaller gate. That’s the servants’ entrance, and it’s never guarded. Ask for Nagisa—he’ll be working today.” Makoto reached around to one of the packs his camel carried, rummaged within, and pulled forth a small, drawstring bag, which he tossed to Haru. “Give him that, and my thanks for his help.”

With Makoto’s warm smile urging him onward, Haru ducked into the throng of people, and followed the instructions he’d been given.

It was hardly any work to find the servants’ gate, and as Makoto promised, it was not under guard—unlike the ornate main gates, which had been stationed with numerous men, all equipped with swords. Haru himself was quick and well-muscled from swimming, but he knew he wouldn’t stand a chance against one of Rin’s royal warriors.

Within the small courtyard, there were dozens of servants running about, tending to daily duties; he grasped one silver-haired boy on the shoulder as he passed Haru, and said, before the servant could sound any kind of alarm, “Do you know where I could find Nagisa?”

To his surprise, the servant rolled his blue eyes. “Unfortunately.” He guided Haru through the kitchens and up into the palace itself, where he opened a door into what seemed to be the servants’ quarters. There, he brought Haru to a young, golden-haired boy, still perfectly asleep on his cot.

The first servant sighed a deep, long-suffering sigh, and bent to shake Nagisa awake.

“I’ve brought someone who wanted to see you,” he explained, when Nagisa whined and rolled over, begging for a few more minutes of sleep. That sent him sitting up in a hurry. His golden hair stuck out in sleep-mussed tufts; he stared at Haru for an uncomprehending moment.

“Makoto sent me,” he said, handing Nagisa the pouch. “He told me to give you that. And also…his thanks.”

The first servant stiffly dipped his head at Haru, and then rushed to make his exit—but not before Nagisa could call out a sweet, “Thanks a bunch, Ai!” to his retreating back. He returned to opening the bag, which contained a glittering treasure of star-shaped candies, and a small note. “Aw, these are my favorite! But…why would Mako…” He unfolded the note, and his eyes widened comically. He looked swiftly up at Haru, back at the note, and then up at Haru’s face once more. “No way. No _way_. _You’re_ Haruka?”

Haru swallowed hard, resisting the urge to flinch. “Yeah.”

“Say no more!” Nagisa bolted out of bed, grabbing Haru’s wrist in his hand, and tugged him along at a breakneck pace. They rounded a corner and up a flight of stairs, all the while with Nagisa chattering excitedly at him—“Mako has told me _so_ much about you, and I never thought I’d have the chance to meet you, even though I’d always wanted to—and to think, you came all this way, just for Rin! He’s been so unhappy lately, but I know seeing you will cheer him up—”

“He’s been unhappy?” Haru asked breathlessly—it was really all he could manage to say—as Nagisa whirled to a sharp halt, tugging Haru behind a corner. There was a large doorway in the center of the hallway, with two bored-looking guards posted outside.

“It’s been a hard time for him, recently,” Nagisa said, his tone sympathetic. “Rin’s father, the Great Prince Over Princes, passed away a week ago, but he was sick for a long time, and the coronation is only in two days.” Without skipping a beat, he threw his arm out into the hallway, grabbing the arm of a young girl walking by. She gasped as Nagisa yanked her behind the corner to stand with them, but if the guards noticed a flash of bright red as she vanished, they did not react.

“ _Nagisa_!” the girl hissed. “Now is _not_ the best time!”

“Gou, I need to sneak Haru into Rin’s rooms,” Nagisa answered.

“Wh—” The girl—the _princess_ —turned, and Haru could see Rin in her wide, bright eyes, in her long, red hair. “This is _Haru_?”

“Ah,” said Haru, a bit belatedly. “Hello.”

Gou pressed her lips into a straight, white line, and then clapped her hands together as if in prayer. “I have no idea what you did, or why he’s even _here_ ,” she told Nagisa, “but if any harm comes to Rin…”

Nagisa scoffed. “ _Please_. Look at him! He wouldn’t hurt a fly; he isn’t even carrying a weapon on him.”

His mind was burning with a single question. _Ask them how they know me, ask them how they know me, ask them how they know me—_

Gou eyed Haru for a long, distrustful moment, and then spun to face Nagisa. “Fine. Leave it to me.” The words died in his mouth, and she was gone before Haru could say anything else. Dumbstruck, he listened as Gou marched down the hallway, gave the guards an imperious command, and heard their muffled footsteps as they followed her. After a long moment, Nagisa peered around the corner, saw that the hallway was clear, and dragged Haru up to the doorway.

 

**_The Ending_ **

 

Nagisa shoved Haru roughly into Rin’s rooms without any announcement or fanfare, and slammed the door closed behind him. Rin had apparently been sitting on the edge of his grand, canopied bed, but at the sound of the door, he lurched to his feet, palming his emerald-sheathed knife from the bedside table as he went. When he saw Haru standing there, unarmed and slightly bewildered, he froze.

And then, to Haru’s amazement, he laughed—a low, dark chuckle, dryer and colder than any laugh he’d ever heard come from Rin’s throat before.

Rin threw the knife aside. It bounced harmlessly onto the mattress behind him as Rin crossed his arms, stared Haru down, and bit off two sharp, angry words—“Get. Out.”

Haru stared back, unflinching, and swallowed hard. “Makoto said they call you the Tiger Lord. Is that why you’ve done that to your mouth?”

Rin bared his teeth at Haru in a feral grin—they had all been filed into predatory points. “You don’t like it?”

“That’s not it.” He watched Rin carefully, and then swallowed hard and said, “I was just thinking they _look_ sharp, but I didn’t notice them when you kissed me.”

Rin’s stare grew incredulous; anger flickered in his eyes, but it warred with something else, something shocked, or perhaps…flustered; he all but roared at Haru, crossing the floor to him, as if he intended to strike Haru, or physically throw him out of his grand, empty rooms. Haru thought that he must be lonely, caged up like a feral tiger, under guard. No _wonder_ he’d had such trouble slipping away to see both him and Makoto by the oasis.

Rin had backed Haru right up against the closed doors, but Haru kept staring him down, unflinching. Even when he was full of anger that he couldn’t understand, Haru thought, Rin was magnificent.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” he snarled under his breath, but in the small, quiet space between them, it could have been as loud as a shout.

Haru did something neither of them had quite been expecting—he smiled, shifting his eyes away from Rin in something akin to nervousness.

“No,” he said. “You’re wrong.” And before Rin could snarl another disbelieving accusation at him, he added, “That first day, when I came to your world, your _time_ , I should never have left.”

Just like that, Rin deflated; all the fight left him, and his eyes were so bright, so beautiful, and so full of an old, aching pain that it left Haru nearly breathless.

It was silent for a very long time.

“I wish you hadn’t left,” Rin admitted, his voice trembling very softly.

He lifted a shaking hand to Rin’s cheek, half-afraid that by touching him he’d break the spell, but as soon as his fingers brushed skin, Rin had leaned forward and was kissing him hungrily. Haru gasped against his mouth, crushed beneath his lips, and then tentatively kissed back—unsure and soft at first, but gaining confidence as he mapped out his lips. Rin’s sheer force soon relented; Haru rediscovered their tempo and guided him back along.

When they broke apart, Rin’s eyes were heavy-lidded and full of fire as he all but leaned over Haru. His right forearm was propped against the doorway; his left hand rested heavily on Haru’s waist. “I thought I wouldn’t see you again,” he murmured, and then bent forward again in order to brush a line of kisses along Haru’s jaw. “Every time I saw you, I always thought it would be the last time.” Haru shivered when Rin made his way to his throat; fire pooled in him, rivaling the bright light he’d seen in Rin’s eyes, and it was more instinct than intent that sent him jerking his hips upward.

Rin hissed.

Haru did it again—a slow, deliberate roll, and Rin made the most _delectable_ noise, all low and dark in his throat. It hummed against Haru’s skin; it breathed air into the flames Rin had kindled in him, all those races ago in the desert, and Haru was burning.

“I thought I told you not to get married,” he retorted before he’d really thought his words over, and Rin froze, snorting a laugh against Haru’s neck.

“I’m not marrying my _empire_ ,” Rin told him. “I’m just getting a new crown.”

“I meant in the future,” Haru said. “The future I wasn’t in.”

Rin was silent for a moment, considering this, before he said, “That’s conceited of you.”

Haru laughed—a low, soft sound. “The future I wasn’t in _yet_ ,” he amended, “but I’m here now.”

“That…that sounds _almost_ like…” Rin’s voice neutral. Very carefully neutral.

“Rin, are you blushing?”

Rin jerked away from Haru as if he’d been burned. Haru would’ve laughed, if he weren’t so distraught by the sudden distance between them. It wasn’t even a choice to follow Rin, to pull his hands away from his eyes, to kiss him again, and then again, and then to murmur, “I want to stay with you.”

Rin crushed him into a hug and whispered harshly back, “I never wanted—I never _want_ you to leave.”

And Haru _had_ been awfully good at leaving—leaving and leaving, and never being able to say with any real certainty when he’d return. It had continued far into a future he’d now deemed null, because he was here. He had found Rin. He would stay with Rin, and Iwatobi’s time would slip on, slowly, and he would be erased from it.

Everything was unknown now—there was no escape back to his home, no Makoto to tell him what would come next—and he thrilled in it, to think that he was finally in control.

He finally had a say in his own destiny.

 

**The First Day (With Rin)**

 

He wanted to move his new destiny toward removing Rin from his gauzy, loose clothing, and so he applied himself to working at the cloth belts cinched low on Rin’s hips. Rin’s face was flushed redder than Haru had ever seen it, but he didn’t tell Haru to stop, and when Haru murmured against Rin’s lips, his skin, “Is this okay? Is this really okay?” he nodded, and shivered, and finally snapped, “I’ll tell you if it’s _not_ okay, so _please_ don’t stop—”

He fell back against his mattress, dragging Haru down with him, and he kissed lower and lower upon Rin’s body, taking his time to press a chaste kiss to his abdomen, his groin, his inner thighs—to make Rin whimper and whine from the _need_ of feeling Haru’s mouth against the one thing that really mattered.

It was all so _much_ ; he could have come right there, just from the way Rin pleadingly hissed out his name.

He finally took Rin’s length into his mouth; just the tip, and then more as his motions grew in confidence. He dragged his tongue up the shaft, relishing in the way Rin’s hips bucked, the way he scraped in air as though Haru was distracting him from breathing. He took as much as he could before his jaw ached and the back of his throat tightened in discomfort, but even if he couldn’t mouth it all, it didn’t seem to draw away from Rin’s pleasure. It wasn’t long before Rin pressed his hands over his mouth, let out a sharp, muffled cry, and practically _wrenched_ apart under Haru’s lips and tongue. He grasped at his bedsheets, breathing hard, while Haru sat up and wiped his lips with a satisfied smirk.

Rin looked up, caught his eyes, and smirked back.

“Let me take care of that for you,” he said, gently nudging his knee up and against Haru’s dick, and a sudden, soft moan spilled from his throat in reply. Immediately, he looked away, as if he could create a wall between himself and Rin in order to hide his embarrassment with just the turn of his cheek—and Rin chased him, refusing to let him escape. He reached out, touched Haru’s face, pulled him back into a tender, quick kiss—one that turned into a longer, wetter kiss, as Rin’s tongue gently licked along Haru’s lips and then pried them apart. He sat up gradually beneath Haru as they kissed, switching where he lay and Haru knelt, and once Haru was beneath him, he pulled away, gazing down at Haru’s face. Liquid fire pooled in Haru’s stomach, his groins, his thighs; when Rin smiled impishly, hovering over Haru with his hands against Haru’s chest, Haru had to stifle another small sound of pure _want_. The clothing Makoto had lent him was gone; he only had hazy recollections of Rin tearing it off.

When he’d left Iwatobi for good, he’d had no idea where this would lead, but it had truly, truly exceeded even his wildest of imaginings.

Rin reached away, grasping at something by his bed—a small, capped bottle—and from that, tipped a kind of liquid into the palm of his hand. Right before Haru’s incredulous eyes, he reached behind himself, and began to work himself open.

For _Haru_.

Haru stared for a long, wordless moment, unable to properly _breathe_ —and then he came back to himself, sat up, and took over for Rin with great enthusiasm. His fingers brushed a spot within Rin that made him double over upon Haru with a gasp, and for a while, Haru was content to work Rin with just his fingers, just to hear those long, gorgeous sounds he made in reply. Eventually, however, Rin had to push Haru back—Haru noticed that his dick was flushed and straining once more.

He didn’t get to admire it for long, because Rin slid himself down, taking Haru inside of him, and Haru saw stars.

“Are you okay?” he managed hoarsely, after a moment, because Rin wasn’t moving.

“Ah—yeah, I’m—fine, this isn’t the first time—”

“It’s _not_?” This was unfathomable to Haru; Rin, however, was quick to correct him.

“I mean, it’s the first time _with_ anybody—” he burst out. “Not that you aren’t my first! I just used. Well. You know.” And before Haru could linger on that thought, he _did_ move, and Haru gasped, and Rin _moaned_ , and—

It was over. For both of them, which saved Haru some humiliation.

Rin laughed, and kissed Haru, and said, “It’s okay. Next time will be better.”

And because they had time—because now they had all the time in the _world_ , with no uncertainty of when the next time would be—Haru dragged Rin’s lips back to his mouth, and occupied them with relish.

He was home.


End file.
